Sometimes we find signs of demographic changewhere we least expect them. In the airport statisticsof the town of Bacau in northeastern Romania, forinstance. While the airport processed barely 10,000passengers in 2001, the number has since risen yearafter year. In 2005 the figure was close to 40,000,and the trend continues to rise. The boom is, however,not a sign of Bacau’s attractiveness. On the contrary,the low-cost airlines that serve the town mainly takepeople out of the country — to Italy and Spain, wherethey find work and livelihoods as construction workersor fruit pickers. These countries are particularlyattractive for Romanians, their languages sound familiarto Romanians, and even the climate is similar to thatat home. In fact, Spain now has some places with aRomanian majority, even with a Romanian politicalparty.

By cross-Romanian comparison, the Northeast regionis still fairly well off in demographic terms. Since 1990its population has contracted only by 1.2 per cent. Theregions West and Centre have lost twelve per cent.However, the area around Bacau, a centre of the chemicaland other heavy industries in the communist era, isthe poor house of today’s united Europe. Here, in thelowlands between the Carpathians and the Republic ofMoldova, people earn an average of 5,070 euros a year,only one thirteenth of the per capita GNP reported forthe Inner London region.